Faces

“I love ‘em and doubt seriously if we could have had a Sex Pistols much less a Replacements without them.” Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.

“I was glad to come, I’ll be sad to go
So while I’m here, I’ll have me a real good time”
Faces – Had Me A Real Good Time

Faces were formed in 1969 by bassist Ronnie Lane, drummer Kenney Jones and keyboardist Ian McLagan – at the time three quarters of über Mods-gone-psyche the Small Faces, would be left in the lurch by their fourth member and frontman Steve Marriott who’d jumped ship to form the ironically named new supergroup Humble Pie, with Peter Frampton (ex-The Herd) – with guitarist Ron Wood and singer Rod Stewart, both of whom had emerged from the debris of Jeff Beck’s first - and, many still believe, best – post-Yardbirds band, The Jeff Beck Group.

These future Faces first collaborated to record four songs and play some shows in May 1969 as Quiet Melon, which also featured Art Wood and Kim Gardner, during a break in Wood's and Stewart's commitments to Beck. Later that year, Woody invited Plonk, as Lane was nicknamed, to join a band with drummer Mickey Waller and ex-Blue Cheer guitarist Leigh Stephens. That didn’t work, but the two Rons jamming and writing together sparked chemistry. They pulled in Mac and, needing a drummer, Jonesy was the natural choice. During rehearsals at the Rolling Stones' complex in Bermondsey (the keys to which came via everyone’s mate and accomplished pianist Ian Stewart), Woody's friend and ex-bandmate, Rod, would often drop by and once Kenney asked him to lend a voice, the rest was history.

Signing to Warner Brothers Records UK in September 1969, Faces’ first two albums, 1970’s First Step (mistakenly credited to Small Faces on the US release) and 1971’s Long Player, showcased their Bermondsey metier – raw, post-mod-meets-blues originals and idiosyncratic covers, the band’s knees-up down the boozer approach influenced by American R&B and electrified Chicago blues à la Chess, Motown and Stax. Their joyously full-throttle interpretation of Paul McCartney’s Maybe I’m Amazed typically blended Otis Redding, the Stones and Free. The internal writing dynamic saw Rod and Ronnie sharing Woody as writing partner, with the ex-Becks creating many songs on the road, during soundchecks, in dressing rooms before shows, while the two Ronnies wrote with great application back home in Richmond, just west of London.

Much of Lane’s writing reveals a wistful link back to the hopes and fears of the post-war working class – “Ronnie wrote with great sensitivity,” according to Jones – the yang to the ying of Rod, Mac and Woody’s cheeky ‘wot me, guv’ hedonism in the face of changing-too-slowly Britain in the early Seventies. When he was in school, Lane’s father, who used to play him bawdy jazz singles like Fats Waller’s Your Feet’s Too Big, told him, "Son, learn to play something, and you'll always have friends." “He really helped me out, my old man,” laughed Lane.

Featuring future classics Flying, On The Beach, Had Me A Real Good Time, Richmond, Around The Plynth and Three Button Hand Me Down, these two albums were great calling cards for the Faces, but it was their live shows that caught the public’s imagination. They regularly toured Britain, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan and the United States from 1970 to 1975, and were among the top-grossing live acts in that period. They also created a convivial rock ‘n’ roll party atmosphere second to none. That the Faces were fond of a drop has passed into legend. “We’d have a party in the hotel bar… in the limo on the way to the gig…in the dressing room. We had a party onstage, came off and had another party – in the dressing room, in the car and back at the hotel," recalls Kenney Jones. “Most of our best work was done in the pub,” Stewart said proudly. “Under all of the camaraderie and joviality, we took the music extremely seriously.” In fact, the band would turn every venue into a pub, with a bar and bartender on stage, the locality’s most beautiful woman in the audience and never any crowd trouble. They also lay claim to inventing that great staple of Seventies bands on tour, the party room, by booking an extra room at each hotel to preserve their own sleeping arrangements, privacy and sanity.

The dichotomy of the Faces was they loved to play live, with America becoming their playground, but with the side-effect being that, while this funded a (constantly on-the-road) lifestyle, which took its toll and probably prevented them from making they great albums the band’s songwriting deserved. Glyn Johns, who’d engineered for The Beatles and produced The Who, helped them nail that effortlessly chaotic sound on vinyl, co-producing third album, 1971’s A Nod Is As Good As A Wink…To A Blind Horse and producing fourth, 1973’s Ooh La La. The former featured such terrific cuts as Miss Judy’s Farm, Too Bad, Debris and That’s All You Need, but it was final track, Stay With Me, in which the band craftily crammed their entire oeuvre into an adrenaline fuelling, gloriously addictive four minutes’ rush. Their first UK Top 10 single, it helped A Nod... storm to #2 in the UK chart. Just over a year later, The Faces just missed the top of the UK chart with single Cindy Incidentally, but two months later, in April 1973, Ooh La La topped it, the Faces first #1 album.

Meanwhile Rod was enjoying a parallel, gradually burgeoning solo career. Before the turn of the decade he’d signed with Mercury on both sides of the Atlantic, the advance from which he’d blown on a new sports car, and in 1970 he sang guest vocals for the Australian group Python Lee Jackson on In a Broken Dream. His payment was a set of seat covers for the car. It was re-released in 1972 to become a worldwide hit. Stewart's 1971 solo album Every Picture Tells A Story made him a household name when DJs starting spinning Maggie May, the mandolin-infused B-side of his minor hit Reason To Believe. In September both single and album went to #1 simultaneously in both the US and UK, a chart first, and follow-up 1972’s Never A Dull Moment went Top 5.

Despite Ooh La La being “Ronnie’s album. Rod wasn’t there a lot,” according to Mac, and featuring such gems as Flags And Banners, If I’m On The Late Side and the Woody sung title track, a disillusioned Lane quit the Faces just after its release during a US tour. Frustrated by band ambivalence towards his compositions, possibly a lack of lead vocal opportunities and hurt by Rod’s behaviour – seemingly disloyal studio absences, misconstrued if heartfelt criticism – Lane's role as bassist was taken over by Tetsu Yamauchi (who had played with the post-Free Simon Kirke and Paul Kossoff), but, as Plonk was the soul of the Faces it was the beginning of the end. December 1973 saw another UK Top 10 with single Pool Hall Richard, but 1974’s live album Coast To Coast: Overture And Beginners was criticised in the press for poor sound quality.

The Faces continued to tour, but late 1974’s UK Top 20 hit You Can Make Me Dance, Sing Or Anything was their last single. The final session was in January 1975 at Air Studios, but many months previously Woody had written with Mick Jagger and worked for weeks with Keith Richards on his first solo affair, the excellent I’ve Got My Own Album To Do.  Later that year Mick Taylor quit The Rolling Stones and Jagger asked Woody to step in. Out of Faces loyalty he initially declined, but by the next summer, after another call, he was on tour with the Stones. This and Rod’s solo success with the massive Atlantic Crossing album brought things to a head and, in December, the Faces announced that they were splitting.

Wood joined The Rolling Stones, eventually as a full member and Stewart's hugely successful solo career is well documented. Jones joined The Who after Keith Moon’s death and, more recently, formed USA-based The Jones Gang. McLagan, after occasional touring with the Stones, settled in Austin, Texas. He records and tours with his Bump Band and is a session player and raconteur of great repute. Lane formed Slim Chance and had a modest solo career, as well as recording 1977’s Rough Mix album with Who guitarist Pete Townshend, during which, tragically, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He moved to Texas in 1984, but his health gradually deteriorated. His last gig in 1992 was with Woody and Mac. Despite great support from friends and fans alike, Lane died in 1997 after a bout of pneumonia.

“The main thing that struck me…was the vibe of the band and the raw looseness between Rod’s voice, the acoustic parts, and Ronnie Lane’s fancy fingers…that’s what a live band should sound like: great melodies, cool songs and all that sexual energy.” Supergrass’ Gaz Coombes

These days the Faces are regularly referenced as one of the Seventies most influential bands, as much by each generation of emerging musicians as album buyers, and Mac’s hard work, compiling an excellent Best Of as well as a superb 5 CD box set, means the Faces recorded legacy will live on, along side the memories and legend of their exemplary live shows. As Slash himself says, "Trust me, we all wanted to be the Faces!"